Points of Light and Reason: Twilight
by Wanderlustlover
Summary: A collection of Edward POV pieces through Twilight. Most quotes belong to the Twilight or Midnight Sun.
1. The Beginning is in Leaving

**Summary: **A collection of Edward POV pieces through Twilight. Most quotes belong to the text.

_**Setting: **_Right after the Bella's Office Moment

* * *

"Never mind. I can see that it's impossible. Thank you for your help."

He was choking on his words, on the amount of air it took to force his vocal cords to work to make them sound right. The smell of her blood was in every particle of the air in that all too small office hallway. He spun and dodged out, escape was the only option even as he could not keep his eyes from finding her face. No. God. _Carlisle._ No. He had to get out of there. He had to leave. Not smiling, not offering to help her, perhaps walk her to her locker, asking about where she lived and why she'd moved and if she'd like a ride with the roads as slick as they were...

He shoved the thoughts away as the breeze outside didn't help to alleviate the roaring inside of him. For all that he had to keep reminding himself not to be marble still or move as fast as his racing thoughts, Edward would have been shaking had he been human. He kept moving - away from the office (away from her), away from the steps (away from her), away from the buildings (away from her), away from the boy who thought he'd appeared out of nowhere (away from her), glancing without seeing to find his siblings already in his car - and slammed the door too hard when he slipped in.

Edward tried to control his mouth, but he was certain that sound - the strangled, gasping, one not being able to pull enough clean air in - was coming from him. He had to leave. He had to get away. Anywhere else. Any other state. Other country. Away. Before he did something worse. Something he'd never be able to undo.


	2. Alaska, Day Two

_**Day Two**_

Alaska wasn't far enough.

Just the thought of her name

_Isabella Marie Swan_

was enough to make his body ache with longing,  
muscles coiling, throat closing, venom pooling his mouth.

Even when he didn't think of it, it was there _Bella_, a specter sliding and slipping into his darkest places _Bella_, hissing at him that he'd allowed his _**perfect**_ prey _Bella_ to evade him, allowed it to chase him off from the only people that matter.

_Why did she have exist? Why did she have to come to Forks?_

He hated her.

He hated himself.

He could still see his face, the face of the monster who'd deliberated her death a hundred times, reflected back in her wide brown terrified eyes. The monster he'd beaten back through decades of effort and uncompromising discipline. The monster that cried out for her blood, cried out to search the whole planet just to taste a single drop of it.

He could still see Carlisle's face when he'd explained, remember the thoughts that had dashed through his mind.

The Denali coven was nice, and indispensable with their information, but they weren't his family.

He wanted to go back.

His thoughts, actions, reactions were all his own here.  
No over reactions. No struggles for control.

He didn't want to prove Carlisle wrong.

He wouldn't be the monster, not after all this time.  
He wouldn't give in.

Yet how could he be sure of that without tempting fate and _her_ overwhelming draw?


	3. Alaska, Day Four

_**Alaska Day 4**_

Eternally damned monster that he was, he could only offer Bella as painless a death a were possible.

* * *

He did not want to kill her. He did not want to become the monster he had spent all those decades harnessing. He could sit with humans for days, their warmth and heart beats and scent, without feeling a tremor of want besides noticing a small increase in thirst.

He only had to see her for flicker of a second and it was not even a day from the beginning. He thought only to glut himself.

They'd forgive him if he slipped. If her death were just a regrettable mistake in decades of restraint.

It was a forgone knowledge that did not help the battle to say on top. They wouldn't even tease him about it for a few months. Carlisle would walk into the hospital and announce that he'd received a better offer from another hospital, and was horribly sorry to leave on such short notice, but there were cases that needed his immediate care and expertise.

They would relocate, across the sea in case of the stir up the police chief's daughter's disappearance might cause, and go on with life as normal.

* * *

When his mind would calm she'd still be there in his thoughts.

_Had she finished the Biology assignment?_

The terror in her eyes when she'd glanced at him both in the classroom and in the main office. How she'd curtained herself behind her hair or coiled herself into the wall. Trying to make herself, or himself, invisible. As though that were the easiest way to solve the situation.

Yet hadn't he taken the same tactic? Hadn't he made himself vanish from her tiny human daily life to save her and save himself?

_Was Wuthering Heights an assignment in a different level English class?_

Yet why did that thought plague him? Did he have the right to forbid her presence ?

_Did she hate him yet?_

This was the way it had to be.

Wasn't it?

Even absent Isabella Swan plagued him.

He would be in the middle of a hunt with Denali members, and errantly picture where she was-in foggy little Forks, facing the day with that determinedly awkward set of her shoulders, while settling into Forks High School, surrounded on all sides by people who wanted something from her that she didn't seem to recognize-and suddenly a blistering heat of possession would claim him.

He didn't want her left at the mercy of Jessica any more today than he had the first moment he'd seen her across the cafeteria.

He didn't want her left at the idiocy of the boys who stumbled after her as the newest shiny bicycle the town had to offer them.

His mouth and his stomach and his mind howled gnashed at these.

They weren't allowed to profane her.

They weren't allowed to damaged and discard her.

She belonged to him and only him. She was made perfectly for him.

Home. He thought about it each day.

They didn't make it easy.

Alice called each day, helpful as ever. Yesterday, minutes after returning from The End of the Universe, she had messaged saying he was a stick in the mud for not returning for months. This morning she mentioned during a phone call, to relay Emmett's newest feat of besting Rose and to get his opinion on details for a trip they both knew she wouldn't consult in planning it anyway, that she was glad he would be home so shortly.

Rose was shouting in the background about a rematch and Esme in the far distance of the house, humming, as she moved things, pausing in mid-note when Alice said what she did. Carlisle gone already, he assumed, to the hospital and Jasper likely settled into a chair in his library with a book, fretting over the next day's trial of being around so many juicy temptations.

He belonged there.

He ached to be back with them.

Alice had said he was coming soon.

He would wait and see if tomorrow her vision changed again.


	4. Back in Forks

_"No matter what it is...or who it is...that is haunting you. You'll face it head on. You're the type."_

Tanya had said those words (among many other grumbling words and thoughts) and Edward had raced home. Somewhere between his surprise at her admissions and his slowly chipped away doubts of Alice's vision never changing they had tipped the ice burg of his fight to stay away.

He'd managed an instance of her (_Bella_) presence in through that entire first class. He could survive through three one hours periods of torture in a week.

No other place in the world held an interest to him because he would be, as he was now, looking back toward where he was running _from_ and never toward what he was going. He didn't want to uproot his family, though they would go if asked, and neither did he want to abandon his life with them without making the attempt.

Her (_Bella_) eyes, chocolate brown and questioning, followed him as he flew toward the last place he called home.

He hoped that Tanya and Alice were right.

He hoped he could be the person they saw when they looked at him.

* * *

Alice had been waiting on the porch, grinning her know it all smile, the others not too far behind.

There had been a dinning room meeting to follow.

They wanted to know from him what he was going to do.

Across their thoughts he could sense the meeting that had taken place previous to this one, based on Alice's foresight. How they would guard him the next day, for himself and for themselves all together.

They knew he would be able to sense their thoughts about it.

And it relieved him not to hear them discussing his, and their, possible demise only moments after his return to them. Not to have to defend passionately, or miserably, his ability to hold himself together. Getting to know, without being told, there was a back up plan to the one he gave them.

* * *

The classes before lunch (_CalculusGovernmentEnglishGym_) flew by as if nonexistent.

Nothing mattered but facing that small, fragile woman-child (_Bella_) again.

Her (_Bella_) appearance in the lunch room had kept his every sense at the alert.

He had been poised to run, yet forcing himself to stay, to smile. To not hit kick his siblings for every codependent twitchy look between themselves or thought about his condition once she'd entered the room. As he realized she still had not revealed his horrid manners to anyone, nor did she seem to be about to.

The silence of her mind plagued him.

The confusion and worry and focus he placed on her did, too.

Edward's gratitude, as was most often, belonged to Alice and her precise planning of the entire situation. A snowball thrown at Emmet at just the right moment so they all looked entirely careless when Bella had seen them.

How Alice hid it from him to make it come off perfectly he didn't question.

Her forethought was enough for then, for them.

* * *

Biology, sitting less than a foot from her (_Bella_), had been hell.

Her (_Bella_) scent tantalizing him wherever he was forced to breathe to talk.

Then, worse, she had stumped him three different times, unraveling his attempt to be smooth and cool.

(The electric, burning feeling of their skin touching. His like ice and hers like fire.

_No, I like Bella. But I think Charlie-I mean my dad-must call me Isabella behind my back. That what everyone here seems to know me as._

Did you get contacts? Oh. I thought there was something different about your eyes.)

He did find useful things in their, if strained by his attempting not to kill her, conversation.

She was selfless and suffering in her relationship toward her parents, to extent of self sacrifice.

He couldn't kill someone like that. At least he told himself that a dozen times.

* * *

_Nobody died? Emmett asked._

"Not this time."


	5. Colliding Cars 1

**Setting: **The Van Accident 1

* * *

Edward was cross when he finally made it to the car.

Why couldn't he just act normal around her?

At least as normal as not killing her could get?

The drive was short and fast and the music he chose was loud. It annoyed Rosalie, but he ignored her mental tirade on how his sanity was not worth the melting of her brain, even as she elbowed the humming along Emmett. Alice was watching out the window, half absorbed in her own world and Jasper was glancing between the two of them.

Edward just ignored it all and drove.

Class would be simple. He'd attempt being civil in class again.

* * *

When they'd parked and gotten out, Bella had nearly slipped and fallen three times on the ice and was now staring at the tires of her derelict truck. Edward watched her with a wave of intense curiosity. Why was she looking at her tires of all things like that? Why couldn't get he hear her thoughts? Why her tires? They were average, snow-chained derelicts, too.

"No!" Alice gasped suddenly.

Tyler's van-the tires right then hitting the ice at the worst possible angle-was going to spin across the lot and crush the girl who had become the uninvited focal point of his world. The girl (_Bella_), standing in the exactly wrong place at the back of her truck, looking up, bewildered by the sound of screeching tires.

Her eyes, wide and warm and brown and horror-struck met his, and then turned toward her approaching death.

_**Not her!**_

Edward moved without thinking about it.

* * *

"How did you get over here so fast?"

"I was standing right next to you, Bella."

"You were by your car."

"No, I wasn't."

"I saw you."

"Bella, I was standing with you, and I pulled you out of the way."

"No."

"Please, Bella."

"Why?"

"Trust me."

"Will you promise to explain everything later?"

"Fine."

* * *

He had betrayed them.

For a single thought of only two words, only halfway into Alice's vision of Bella's demise, he had betrayed everything they built up.

He deserved the thoughts which poured out of his siblings while they loitered as far away as possible, annoyed that they must now play concern over his well being. He knew at least two of them would have rather liked to pick the van up and launch it at his head.

He might have found it deserving if he wasn't utterly caught in plying the excuse of Bella's concussion to anyone whom she might mention the extraordinary circumstances of being alive to, never giving into the fear that threatened to strangle his thoughts that in saving her he might have done her damage as well.

There was the ambulance with its EMTs and then Charlie.

A long road and then there was Carlisle.

_You did the right thing. And it couldn't have been easy. I'm proud of you, Edward._

* * *

"Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"You're father is waiting for you."

"I'd like to speak to you alone, if you don't mind."

"What do you want?"

"You owe me an explanation."

"I saved your life-I don't owe you anything."

"You promised."

"You think I lifted a van off of you? Nobody will believe that, you know."

"I'm not going to tell anybody."

"Can't you just thank me and get over with it?"

"Thank you."

"You're not going to let it go, are you?"

"No."

"In that case...I hope you enjoy disappointment."

"Why did you even bother?"

"I don't know."


	6. Colliding Cars 2

__**Setting: **The Van Accident 2

* * *

Even wanting to head home, the last image of her tense face and her indolent anger etched into his mind, he had to stop at the school and play his part. He had created this mess and it would be best if he returned home able to tell them he'd taken care of it as well. He needed to stop by the office and report in about Tyler and Bella.

But he failed there, too, when he found himself, not unable but, unwilling to lie and tell the desk help that Bella had hit her head and might have been seeing things due to her incoherence.

Edward owed that to his family.

He had told millions of lies for them before with no fault. Why wouldn't he now?

* * *

Meeting up with Emmet had not gone well once he'd realized the extant to of Jasper and Rosalie's reactions. There would be another meeting in the house that night, there would be a decision, a vote, a possible abandonment, over the truth that Bella Swan who had seen what he could do, who had seen it all he knew from their conversation in the hospital, should be taken out for their protection.

The moment he realized the extent of Jasper's intent it had taken Emmet holding him down to keep him from acting under the haze of angry red that surged through him.

He spent a class sizing up himself against his brother, considering the sides that would be taken and logistics of what would come soon.

How did one small, fragile, brown eyed girl ruin everything in his life and his family so quickly?

* * *

"We've left rumors behind us before."

"Just rumors and suspicions, Edward." Rosalie yelled. "Not eyewitnesses and evidence!"

"It's being callous," Carlise corrected gently. "Every life is precious."

"Jasper. She won't pay for my mistake. I won't allow it."

"She benefits from it then? She should have died today, Edward. I would set that right."

"I will not allow it."

"I won't let Alice live in danger, even a slight danger. You don't feel about anything the way I feel about her, Edward, and you haven't lived though what I've lived through, whether you've seen my memories or not. You don't understand."

"I'm not disputing that, Jasper. But I'm telling, I won't allow you to hurt Isabella Swan."

"Jazz," Alice interrupted.

"Don't bother telling me you can protect yourself, Alice. I already know that. I've still got to-"

"That not what I was going to say. I was going to ask you for a favor. I know you love me. Thanks. But I would really appreciate it if you didn't try and kill Bella. First of all, Edward's serious and I don't want the two of you fighting. Secondly, she's my friend. At least, she's _going_to be."

"But...Alice..."

"I'm _going_ to love her someday, Jazz. I'll be very put out if you don't let her be."

_I love her, too._ Alice stared straight at Edward._ Or I will. It's not the same, but I want her around for that._

"Love her, _too_?" Edward whispered, incredulously.


	7. The Epiphany

**Setting: **The Return after His Absence

* * *

It's maddening to sit next to her.

One foot away for fifty minutes, making his shoulders move briefly up and down in a continual pattern to assume the act of breathing, or actually breathing, sheerly as little and infrequently as possible, since every time he does the longing scalds through his entire body. The gut wrenching promise of true satisfaction only inches away.

One foot away for fifty minutes, trying to translate the smallest idiosyncrasies of the first mind he can't read. Why she sighs into her shoulder or twirls her hair around her finger. Why she taps her foot or drums her pencil or picks at her sleeve. Why she slams her books down or comes in late or mutters half sentences to herself. What it all means.

Whether she hates him or doesn't even care, since she hasn't said a word in the whole month either.

The epiphany, when it comes, isn't the hard part.

* * *

It is madness - the madness that only Isabella Swan can evoke in him - that has him paying attention to high schoolers for the first time in half a dozen decades. It's the only way to see her, to try to answer of the hundred questions she has him asking. Through their eyes, through their own personal translations and opinions of their Bella. The way her face scrunches or what her tone means, what she speaks when she will and their assumptions of her silences.

Some of them, like Angela, were calming. Even comforting.

Others, like the child approaching their desk now, caused his blood to boil.

Mike Newton. The boy wonder who spent far too much of class studying Bella as though she were a bug under glass he was figuring out the best way to catch. That was, when he wasn't just vulgarly envisioning what he could do with her once he got, his inevitable, way. He was stumbling after her - bumbling was a better word for the badly planned job of asking Bella to ask him to the dance by means of showing her someone else had already asked but that he was keeping them on hold until she would.

Apparently he hadn't the vaguest clue what Ladies Choice meant.

But he watches the whole thing through the filter of Newton, trying to figure her out. Her thoughts and reactions and opinion of him, until he's side tracked. She isn't going to say yes to Mike. The part is obvious. But someday, somewhere, to someone, she is going to yes. And suddenly the future he's envisioned saving her from death for

_graduation career love marriage children grandchildren life growing old dying_

causes only an explosive, violent pain.

Leaves him wanting to snap Newton's head just for looking at her. Not because he's the smallest threat, but because he could be a message for that inevitable person. Yet he can't move, can't shift, can't do anything but watch her (_Bella Bella Bella_) as she set her pale cheeks in her hands, her long brown hair swallowing her face, shoulders curving inward, head shaking, and sighs.

A remote and maddening island he can't reach or read or understand.

But then she looks at him and he can't even remember he's supposed to look away.

And when he answers the teacher, stealing the answer, he doesn't want to.

The epiphany, the sheer size of it, isn't the hard part.

* * *

"Bella?"

"What? Are you speaking to me again?"

"No, not really."

"Then what do you want, Edward?"

"I'm sorry. I'm being very rude, I know. But it's better this way, really."

"I don't know what you mean."

"It's better if we're not friends. Trust me."

"It's too bad you didn't figure that out earlier. You could have saved yourself all this regret."

"Regret? Regret for what?"

"For not just letting the stupid van squish me!"

"You think I regret saving your life?"

"I know you do."

"You don't know anything."


	8. The Epiphany 2

**Setting: **Edward Continues to Watch Bella's Life Unfold without Interaction.

* * *

High school boys are creatures unto themselves.

Like jackals all laughing in a line, waiting to take the next snap. It's disgusting and yet he can't keep himself from standing nearby, listening and watching, and figuring out when he's going to intercept the space they're in. The midway point of a desperate drama where he's watching them all take turns with the chance, like she's just a toy for them to pass about.

Eric Yorkie was waiting by her car, posed so she couldn't pass him without the run in he planned.

He'd thought her excuse to his rival exactly that, an excuse. But, unlike Newton, he took his rejection gracefully, without trying to make her say what she obviously felt no need to. Which was right when he passed them in the parking lot headed toward his own car, on his normal route to getting it for his siblings. He hadn't meant to laugh, but there was something so brilliant in the way Bella has sighed when Eric walked away from her.

Of course. She took it as an insult. It seemed.

It was wrong, what he did next, blocking her car. He was waiting for his siblings but that wasn't the point of it. It was watching her when Tyler knocked on her window. It was hearing the absurdly obtuse anger in her voice when she said his name, citing him as the reasons he was stuck. It was watching the shock on her face and the panic in Tyler's when the same scene repeated itself for yet the third time.

For the look of dawning horror on her face when Tyler mentioned it was fine because they still had prom.

The expression, with her eyes wide and her mouth open, even though the foggy window of her car had sent him into hysterics.

It wasn't even funny. He was sure it wasn't. It was horrifying and manipulative and like someone blind and deaf feeling in the dark the way none of them actually heard her refusal for being just that. She gaped like a fish in her indulgent anger, as his laughter shook the car and his siblings piled in grumbling. It takes him seconds to stop laughing, even when Rosalie is snapping, and he can't stop chuckling even as the car winds its way toward their only true freedom.

The epiphany, with its giddy illusion, isn't the hard part.

* * *

"Do I get to talk to Bella now?

"No."

"Not fair! What am I waiting for?"

"I haven't decided anything, Alice."

"Whatever, Edward."

"What is the point of getting to know her? If I'm just going to kill her?"

"You have a point."

* * *

James Joyce once said-

_that by an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the educated man to record these moments with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments._

The epiphany is never the hard part.

* * *

It's figuring out what to do now that he can't pretend he doesn't _know_.

It's happens right before he's going to head out hunting.

He's sitting on the living room couch finishing the last three questions in his Spanish homework. Trying to make it look realistic, even though Mrs. Goss knows he can speak with a fluency far exceeding her own. Everyone else is busy when the footsteps ghost their way to him, the weight shifting the couch.

"I knew you-"

"Don't," Edward snapped, things happening in hundredths milliseconds. His pencil was left on the sheet of all too thin paper. He half-sighed, not looking to her, his hand resting on her knee. "Please."

Alice's hand slid in-between his and her jeans, fingers curling up around his hand. Her head leaned on his shoulder, pivoting as gold eyes sought gold eyes. The concern in her expression only out measured by the quiet presenient joy, even though they can both see what's going to happen next.

_It's going to be okay. You'll see._


	9. Learning to Breathe

**Setting:** Bella's Room; still not interacting with each other.

* * *

He could try to give off a hundred reasons, tens of hundreds, millions, for why he was standing there in her bedroom far past midnight, but each would be as indefensible as the next. Each smaller and less sensible and closer to the truth - that he didn't know where else to be but here and he knew that here was the very last place he should be.

Watching that small, pale, defenseless girl, in her thread bare shirt and holey sweat pants, thrash and mumble to her mother from her dreams. Doing his best not to breathe at all. Trying to figure out how he'd ever thought her average and unnoticeable. Finding the idea of hurting her now even more unbearable than it had been originally simply for himself or his family.

Should he leave again? Could he now?

It would be for the best.

His family wouldn't stop him this time.

There could be a dozen respectable lies - a early college acceptance, a teenage runaway, visiting relatives, taking a semester aboard.

Edward kept away from her things. The books and cd's and clothes, the clutter of a life being lived. His eyes wandered across them when he could bring himself to look away from her, longing to go closer, to see what filled her mind and made up her passions, but he couldn't. He was already trespassing too far simply standing there.

He had trespassed into every part of her life without her knowing. Nearly her death, having saved her life and now her own bedroom, disgusted with both and yet feeling incapable of the control necessary for to stop any of them. He needed to find a way to leave her. Her bedroom. Her life. Her world. Leave her to those fragile, warm, heart-beat having other people who could have her in their lives.

Without wanting to kill her for simply existing or bringing too much danger into her life.

There was going to be someone, somewhere, some life she was destined for.

It wouldn't be him. It couldn't be him.

How could that hurt so staggeringly?

"Edward."

He'd gone marble still, eyes flashing to her, to the window, and back before she'd finished mumbling his name the second time in her sleep. He couldn't be feather light, it wouldn't even be feasibly possible, yet he felt like he could have been knocked over by the faintest touch. Her voice continued to echo in his thoughts as he shuffled backwards, further away even as the urge to move closer to her bed choked his chest.

"Stay." Bella sighed, into her pillow and the wide fan of her hair. "Don't go. Please...don't go."

He couldn't have moved if he wanted to now. She was dreaming of him; pleading with him not to go in her dream; pleading with him not leave her even as he'd known he must. She was dreaming of him. _Isabella Swan_ was dreaming _of him_, of _not wanting him to leave_.

She shifted with another sigh and Edward held his hands tight at his opposing arms. Nothing was ever going to be same. Nothing. It wasn't that Alice could be right. It was that she was. It was that everything about falling in love with her, everything that was just admitting he already was, would be easier than thinking. It was only the struggle against it that made everything a living hell.

After eighty years, his life had finally been altered the same way as his family members.

He did love her. Unequivocally. Irrevocably. He would for the rest of eternity.

Now he'd have to be strong enough to leave her.  
He'd have to find the will, the strength.  
She deserved her life, didn't she?

Alice had only given them two options even when she'd seen him in love with her.  
He would either kill her or she would become one of their kind.  
Neither was a feasible situation.

He wouldn't ask Carlisle to take her life, her soul, away.  
She deserved better than a half life in shadows.  
A world full possibilities, not limitations.

Could there be another way? Could he find a way between Alice's visions? Could he walk the thin wire of staying? Could he stay and love her and still defy both of Alice's inevitable conclusions? Would he strong enough? What had she said that night?

_He may be just strong enough not to kill her-but it will be close. It will take an amazing amount of control. More even than Carlisle has. He may be just strong enough...The only thing he's not strong enough to do is stay away from her. That's a lost cause._

She was right. Alice was always right. But she couldn't be right about those two inevitabilities. He'd managed this long to snarl her future up. If he could stay a few steps ahead of her-for how long? Always? Would it divide them the way nothing ever had before as he continued to play havoc with her mind based on his own refusal of her vision? Could he live with that inevitability?

Bella murmured unintelligibly and Edward watched her with dark, conflicted eyes.

He would. He would give anything to save her from the two damning fates that were presently her only option. Even Alice. Even if that thought was paralyzing and shattering different things inside of him as others blossomed bright. He had to save her. There was no other option. He couldn't love her and leave her to either of those endings, and he didn't know if he could find the will power to leave her. Not after the last few hours.

Could he be careful enough? Could he leave her human and be with her?

Edward opened his mouth and took a deep breath.

Then another and another and another.

It was worse than the class room, where there was an air flow and windows, dozens of other innocuous scents lay one upon another as minute distractions from the force of her. Her bedroom held no distraction however minute. It was only her. The perfume of her scent layered heavily on every single inch of it, weeks of being in one place concentrated thick. His head swam, vision blurring without ever actually altering, hands gripping tighter and harder into granite forearms.

He trembled with the fight not to move from where he sat.

Being on fire couldn't have felt this horrible.

Edward continued to take gulping breaths, refusing to stop.

His darkening eyes never left the quietly sleeping face and form of Bella Swan.

If he was going to attempt anything involving her, he would have to get used to this first.


	10. Excuses, Like Puddles

**Setting:** The morning after 'Learning to Breathe'

* * *

The next morning he arrived back at his house conveniently after his siblings had departed. Racing up the stairs to change, Edward avoided Esme's gaze, wondering only once he was half into the khaki pants and beige sweater if he actively reeked of Bella's scent after the night in her room. He wasn't sure he could tell. Everything still smelled like her faintly, the cloying feeling in his throat calmed but not gone even for the long run.

It was reason enough not to stay around or go too close and find out.

He couldn't justify his actions yet. Only acknowledge that they had happened.

Edward had to wait at the edge of the forest near Fork High School – until his siblings had passed into the main building, even though he didn't miss the silent signal from Alice that she knew he was there without looking to him, until the parking lot was all but empty of other students – before he could slip out of the forest into the parking lot, appearing as though he were any other student walking from a car.

It was simply irony that half way across the lot Bella's derelict truck rolled into the parking lot.

He'd stopped behind a suburban torn between vanishing into the school and standing there to watch her. It had been settled when Bella glared furiously at his Volvo as she passed it in the parking lot. It was only then that he realized she was still probably furious about their discussion from the day before.

That it had been less than a day still.

That she hadn't been part of the earth shifting change that had remade his world.

Only barely able to keep from laughing, Edward found himself smiling at the absurdity as he walked toward her parking spot on the furthest side of the parking lot from where his siblings had parked his car. She might not care at all. She might never care. How had that never come to his mind during all those pain, and love, driven hours?

It didn't change his vow to watch over and protect her.

It would even be better if she didn't care.

Easier, wiser, and healthier for her.

Edward was very sure of that.

If only she hadn't dropped her key in that snow melted puddle.

* * *

"How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Appear out of thin air."

"Bella, it's not my fault If you are exceptionally unobservant."

"Why the traffic jam last night? I thought you were supposed to be pretending I don't exist, not irritating me to death."

"That was for Tyler's sake, no mine. I had to give him his chance."

"You—"

"And I'm not pretending you don't exist."

"So you _are_ trying to irritate me to death? Since Tyler's van didn't do the job?"

"Bella, you are utterly absurd."

"Wait. I'm sorry that was rude. I'm not saying it isn't true, but it was a rude to say it, anyway."

"Why won't you leave me alone?"

"I wanted to ask you something but you side tracked me."

"Do you have a multiple personality disorder?"

"You're doing it again."

"Fine then. What do you want to ask?"

"I was wondering if, a week from Saturday… You know, the day of the spring dance—"

"Are you trying to be funny?"

"Will you let me finish? I heard you say that you were going to Seattle that day, and I was wondering if you wanted a ride?"

"What?"

"Do you want a ride to Seattle?"

"With who?"

"Myself, obviously."

"Why?"

"Well, I was planning to go to Seattle in the next few weeks, and, to be honest, I'm not sure if your truck can make it."

"My truck works just fine, thank you very much for your concern."

"But can you make it there on one tank of gas?"

"I don't see how that's any of your business."

"The wasting of finite resources is everyone business."

"Honestly, Edward, I can't keep up with you. I thought you didn't want to be my friend."

"I said that it would be better if we weren't friends, not that I didn't want to be. It would be more prudent for you not to be my friend -

but I'm tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella."


	11. Spider Kryptonite

He watched her even closer that day. If he'd thought it strange to pull of the necessity of such juvenile minds as her peers and teachers to watch her earlier, now he found himself nearly incapable of taking part in classes because his attention was diverted to only those near her.

Which was when he realized something baffling: Bella was clumsy.

It was true that she did seem to have problems staying upright. She managed to drop things more often than most of the people near her. She stumbled over her own books, the cracks in the side walk, the dividers in flooring, and even her own feet.

She _had_ been on the floor and more than once shrieked at the drink in her hands.

Edward burst out loud laughing when he realized it was true, startling his entire English class.

Thankfully the bell was only a short pause of purgatory before he was free for lunch.

* * *

He raced, faster than a blur that might be seen, to the cafeteria. He could hear the racing feet far behind him still as he surveyed the empty domain, eyes raking over the table his family took usually. Then he took a seat at a table on the opposite side of the room, hands settled on the table as he watched the doors open for the flood of children.

Many of them gave him no notice. Some noticed it only to dismiss it as another one of those strange Cullen things. His siblings passed him in a silent, graceful march to their normal table, each with their own thoughts on the subject. He only snapped at Alice for her exuberant hopeful one. He could at least understand and appreciate all of the others considering that he'd finally lost his mind.

She'd still reminded him of the Biology Lab.

How annoying it was to be reminded that there would be another hour in which he could only watch her from a distance, through others eyes and filters, but there could come no good out of any Cullen being a room where Blood Typing was going on. He was grateful even as he found the occurrence to be bothersome to his other plans.

But then Bella walked in, looking across the room, with an expression of such exquisite sadness he couldn't think of anything else. He longed to get up and cross the room, lift her chin upward, to comfort her somehow. What could have affected her with such sudden seriousness? How did she like to be comforted? And was it even possible that she'd let him?

He studied her from a distance, trying to tune out the incessant chatter of Jessica's words and thoughts, wondering why she got so little for lunch. Certainly she should have needed more –something, anything – her body had thousands of processes that needed fuel to continue running. He'd only begun to contemplate just how exasperatingly fragile and complicated her system would be based on his medical background when Jessica pointed out he was staring.

He wondered briefly, if he'd been human, would he have flushed or felt the need to look away.

He only stared harder, waiting those agonizing two seconds, for Bella's reaction.

The snap of her head and the sudden demeanor change; her sadness gone.

That was far more than he'd expected. It left him…._hopeful_.

Edward crooked a finger and beckoned her over.

Bella's excuses to Jessica for his attention were expected, though he had to marvel once more than she didn't know at all what his reasons were. That she had no bearing to understand what all had taken place in him over the night. That the mad tenderness he felt in conflict with his morals and her scent had no relation to the anything he'd done before this last twenty four hours.

But then she stumbled twice on the perfectly even linoleum and he found himself smiling widely.

* * *

"I think your friends are angry at me for stealing you."

"They'll survive."

"I may not give you back, though."

"You looked worried."

"No. Surprised, actually…What brought this on?"

"I told you. I got tired of trying to stay away from you. So I'm giving up."

"Giving up?"

"Yes—giving up trying to be good. I'm just going to let the chips fall where they may."

"You lost me again."

"I always say too much when I'm talking to you—that's one of the problems."

"Don't worry. I don't understand any of it."

"I'm counting on that."

"That's really frustrating, you know."

"No, I can't imagine why that would be frustrating at all—just because someone refuses to tell you what they're thinking, even if all the while they're making cryptic little remarks specifically designed to keep you up at night wondering what they could possibly mean…now, why would that be frustrating? Or better, say that person also did a wide range of bizarre things—from saving your life under impossible circumstances one day to treating you like a pariah the next, and he never explained any of that either, even after he promised. That, also, would be very non-frustrating."

"You've got a bit of a temper, don't you?"

"I don't like double standards."

"No spiders?"

"Nope."

"And no radio activity?"

"Nope."

"Dang."

"Kryptonite doesn't bother me either."

"You're not supposed to laugh remember? I'll figure it out eventually."

"I wish you wouldn't try."

* * *

When she ran off to Biology, like a responsible high school student, Edward sat there at the table watching until her back and long brown hair vanished around the corner. Then watched her as she passed dozens of people through the hallway, different shots from different heights and varying states of being busy.

All the while breathing in the wildfire inducing scent of her as it lingered in the air around his table, his fingers still spinning the lid of her lemonade like a top.

He'd said too much.

He hadn't said nearly enough.

He ached with her absence and it hadn't been minutes yet.

Standing, Edward slipped the lid into his pocket and headed toward the parking lot to wait for his next class.


	12. In Your Condition

**Setting: **Blood Testing Day.

* * *

Debussy fell note by note from the speakers, but Edward was staring distracted through the pattering raindrops on the windshield to that grey and murky sky unseeing. He was listening to the melody of a piano fragment that had stolen into his thoughts. He reached out and shut off the stereo, his fingers shifting through the air as though there was a piano beneath them. The fuller harmony would have stretched there and then-

Newton distracted him by a diatribe of panic as he was setting Bella's prone figure down on the concrete and Edward nearly took off the door to his car. Her name had left his mouth loudly before he could even consider the fact he'd been about to say it. He'd begun to imagine the beautiful relief that would course through him with Mike's head snapped as the boy finally managed to relay that she'd passed out during Blood Typing.

Before she could even get done herself. That was the first small favor he'd been granted of her.

He didn't have to try and resist her free flowing blood as well as her scent.

Mike's thoughts and presence were that of an annoying fruit gnat compared to his focus on Bella's ashen, prostrate figure. His relief when she spoke came with a laugh. There was nothing else in the world to focus on but managing to walk still and straight as he carried Bella in his arms, held out so only her clothes could manage to brush against him- as much distance as possible between them.

She tried to order him to put her down but the weak tone of her voice did nothing to help convince him she could make the nurses office on her own. He took her in and explained things calmly to Ms. Cope, carrying on the smallest momentary discussions with Bella. It really was ironic, and hilarious, that she fainted at the sight of blood. Could they be anymore mismatched?

It wasn't a pleasant sensation, watching Mike's return and listening to their discussion about their plans for the coming week. But what right did he have to anger or jealousy he felt? She was allowed to have life. It was better for her if she did have a life that didn't involve him. Besides Alice had said it would be sunny all weekend, and he had previous plans with Emmett, and it was on La Push Reservation's First Beach, and it was going to be covered with the children from the school. Not to mention the Quileute.

Impossible detail after impossible detail only continued to surmount between himself and Bella.

Patiently frustrated, he was only too glad to give Bella an out from gym class when she grumbled about it.

Convincing Ms. Cope that he could manage without one hour of Spanish and offering to see Bella home had been all too easy.

The office let them get away with whatever they asked for usually. It was hard to argue with the bunch of Cullen kids. They never got into trouble with other students or teachers. Their grades remained remarkable in every class, regardless of the fact they were pulled out so frequently by their parents for travel. They had the right answers when they were called on and they didn't mind displaying it. This made the fact they might be distractible or strangely anti-social acceptable to most of the adults at the school.

It surprised him, when walking through the rain to the parking lot, she'd asked if he was coming to the beach with them.

Even with the inability to accept, he felt dazed by the hopeful sound of her voice when she'd asked.

It had been pleasant up until she'd started walking off in the direction of her truck.

Then he'd, perhaps, over reacted to the shock of her assumptions.

* * *

"Didn't you hear me promise to take you safely home? Do you think I'm going to let you drive in your condition?"

"What condition? And what about my truck?"

"I'll have Alice drop it off after school."

"Let go!"

"I'll just drag you back."

"This is completely unnecessary."

"Clair de Lune?"

"You know Debussy?"

"Not well. My mother plays a lot of classical music around the house-I only know my favorites."

"It's one of my favorites, too."

* * *

Having her in the car, meant there was less and less and less space in which to breathe, yet he forced himself to.

Her rain-sweetened scent filled up his car, wildly strong in its distraction from both her voice and the music coming from the stereo again. He couldn't help focusing on how she sat there entirely naive in not knowing the will it took for him just to sit this close to her, without rolling down the windows or flinching away or grinding his steering wheel into dust.

Bella talked easily on about her parents, and he was required to reciprocate in some information about his own family. At least some information on the running falsehood that made up their story in Forks for the last few years.

The drive took next to no time, even though he'd made a conscious effort to remain under the speed limit by five miles. Still her house appeared and he'd slowed, looking it over this time in the gloomy grey of the day. Her haven and home. The place he had so recently invaded, even though neither of the Swans knew absolutely nothing of his trespass.

There was something to the further realization that he'd trespassed not into Bella Swans house but that of Fork's Chief of Police.

Their conversation dwindled as the rain his the windshield after he parked. He'd had to relate that he was leaving a day early with Emmett and she'd been disappointed. Then, trying to be serious, but not too apparent in his overarching concern about her fragility, he'd asked her to take care of herself and she'd been instantly offended. She glared and snapped at him and slammed the door behind her and left him watching her walk away for the second time that day.

It was foolhardy to let her out of his sight, where anything could happen to her.

Yet, the worst that could happen to her would result from her being near him.


	13. Vengance Must Wait

**Setting: ** Port Angeles on The Sunny Weekend.

* * *

The afternoon was made of sitting in his car at the far outskirt of Port Angeles, not trying to tempt the sun and the madness.

It was also made of endless prattle. Who's skin looks better with which color, do we have matching shoes, do my breasts/hips/ankles/shoulders look right and how should I do my hair. It's like listening to his sisters, except for them he actually has marginal patience and the ability to ignore them. Here and now, trying to weed out the vipers nest of Jessica's thoughts for the gentle stream that Angela's resembled, was his only way.

Not that he enjoyed the necessity of using either of them.

But it was the only way he could see where Bella was.

It was hard enough just sit still and watch.

Five days away had been hellish.

* * *

Still he didn't stay with them always. He didn't like his focus being invaded by Jessica's self-absorption and both of them spent just as much time in dressing rooms at the same time as out of them, places he followed neither of them into.

Which was, of course, how he ended up driving down the west side of the street in Port Angeles, clinging to the shadows thrown by buildings, staring through dark tinted windows at the still too far away sunset clouds headed toward the bookstore Angela had thought of when he realized Bella had walked off from them. He cursed his luck and not having considered her leaving them when he was being respectful to their privacy.

He stood trying to pretend he didn't feel like a caged wild animal staring at the edge of awning shadows where sunlight kept him at bay. That Bella was _missing_. That she wasn't in the bookstore. That he could not follow her scent were it went, out there into the radiant light of late afternoon.

Two days it had kept him prisoner from her already-from any insistence of a life he might have outside sitting in shadows and waiting for it to go back behind the rain soaked clouds. This was almost more than he could bear. This was not sleepy little Forks with its timelessness or boredom. It was Port Angeles, and it the sunshine gloated at him.

So he got back in his car, back behind the protective barrier of the black convection glass, and the west ward wall shadows, cursing in low guttural snarls as he drove around the unhelpful Port streets watching for her in miles of eyes.

It had to have been _hours_.

Waiting and watching and fretting, helpless as the sunset lingered.

He drove between the dress shop, the restaurant and the bookstore frantic.

* * *

And then just as suddenly her face had filled his mind, bringing with it a sharp exquisite relief, only to be dashed by the thoughts (_Here she comes! Ah!_) of the monster who had Bella Swan in his sights. His steering wheel and the floor board under the gas pedal were nearly devastated by the sudden reaction accompanying the yell the bellowed out of him.

There was no way to tell where they were.

Bella was in the shadows, a look of quiet dread and fear on her face.

_He_enjoyed that. It reminded him of his other victims. All the others faces that flickered in with Bella's. She would fit in well with them he thought.

The sounds emanating from Edward shook the frame of the car, the metal beneath his fingers crying out from the pressure extricate on it. He needed a street sign, a store front, anything more than just the section of the city. The Volvo flew through alleys, narrowly dodging other drivers who didn't even exist in his mind anymore by the time they'd managed to honk and swerve.

There were others with _him_.

_His _called them to Edward's attention and he leapt for them, casting about for the direction and sights-and, yes, a cross street. The drunken boys in the cast about the ring leader, this Lonnie, had no true idea about his intentions toward Bella. He'd only promises them a little fun...

Edward would kill them all- for considering it, for looking at her.

The red light flew over his car unheeded, like the honking to his right and left when he slid through a space just big enough to take the car without what should have been a devastating five car pileup. His pocket vibrated, but he ignored it. He couldn't answer, couldn't think straight, had to get to Bella.

Lonnie was advancing on her, pleading in his mind with her, that she might scream and beg. Edward wasn't going to kill Lonnie first. No, he would dispatch his little gang, necks snapped and limbs broken in seconds, and then he was going to rip every hair out of Lonnie's body one at a time in his time frame, not a human one, break each joint or bones that could be without tearing his skin and then pull his skin off in strips no bigger than half an inch, then the same with his muscles, tear out his tongue so he couldn't scream or beg for the mercy that wouldn't be afforded to him, leave his blood and body be wasted meat in the street.

He could hear the squealing tires of the Volvo in the minds of the men now. He pressed the gas pedal harder, listening to the gears in the floor grind with the unnatural pressure.

Lonnie was nearly at Bella now, one hand extended to her, his thoughts racing over her body and her face - when suddenly the car spun around a corner and it was pristinely in front of. The man Lonnie, and _Bella_, all the lollygag hoodlums he'd collected drunkenly at the bar. There was no temptation to run him over.

It was far too merciful.

He needed to die in the kind of pain where he'd pray he'd never been given the right to breathe. Lonnie jumped out of the way of the Volvo as it spun out, sideways and around, so that he was facing the way he'd come, one hand deathly still on the wheel and the other throwing wide open the passenger door toward where Bella stood.

"Get in," he snarled, barely able to form words through violent rage.

She listened, for once. Ran for the door, hurtling herself into his passenger seat and slamming the door behind her, an explosion of sickening delicious glee burbling up at her scent, as his eyes snapped to the rear view mirror and Lonnie's face before it went to her.

Edward's violent plans for the perfect torture and murder cracked;

On the most trusting expression he'd ever seen in his century of life.

* * *

He couldn't leave her alone, take them somewhere else to do it.

Couldn't run him over without terrifying her.

He couldn't kill any of them in front of her.

He couldn't kill them right now.

Violent, scalding anger flared at her being in the way of him defending her life, of ripping five people who have no right to any semblance of life from it. He nearly growled at her in the utter frustration of the pure red he was seeing. The flavor of their deaths was in the tension the held the muscles in his back rigid, the venom in his mouth, the haze of his perfect vision. The savage need was so strong. Still she stared up at him, fragile as a soap bubble, unknowing of the danger she'd actually been in, brown eyes wide and trusting, full of relief and awe, and he had to look away.

Snapping at her to put on her seat belt as her maneuvered the car into reverse, the needle idling around sixty.

Vengeance had to wait. Vengeance had to wait. Vengeance had to wait.

He was good at patient now, right?

* * *

Their voices traded words his thoughts couldn't hold on to.

How could he leave her alone anywhere now?

If this was what happened?

He desperately needed to be able to think clearly.

"Distract me, please."


	14. Say Too Many Things

**Setting: ** Port Angeles, The Night Of.

* * *

He couldn't let her out of his sight, lest she managed to find something even worse than a roaming sociopathic serial killer and rapist, and he couldn't let himself out of her sight, lest he comb the whole city over to shatter every inch of bone in that sociopaths' body for what he'd imagined doing to _Bella_, for what he'd done to a dozen other women all of whom were beloved, and hypothetically now mourned, by someone else.

Which had brought them to _Bella Italia_, with its invasively juvenile staff and its revolting smell of refuse suffusing his every breath when he spoke, where he pressed soda and food on Bella waiting for the shock of her situation to settle in. It never did. Which was far more worrying and distracted him from the direction of their conversations, what with Bella's displeased preoccupation toward his interactions with the vapid fawning staff, until-

_I always say too much when I'm talking to you_

-Edward found himself in the middle of explaining how it was he'd found her. It had started with another one of her 'theories' in an adolescent, if not inefficient, supposition. It had ended, the only way it could if he wasn't going to continued mountain of fabrication, with the truth. He had only thought to give her something, some small bit of honesty, enough to show he wasn't just going to stonewall her with another excuse or with silence.

Except he'd felt relieved, no _pleased_, to share the truth about his ability with her.

And that had opened a whole new realm of aching possible impossibilities and details, words and phrases falling from his lips almost without heed. Recklessly close to all the most pivotal, volatile, truths involving what he was and what she was and had been to him since the moment she walked into Biology class, how her tiny all but insignificant human life had upended his entire, supposedly nearly unchangeable, world, and even his murderous intent toward the man whose thoughts he could still pin point to perfect placement through her entire meal.

* * *

The car ride home had been the inquiry of her actual newest theory. The one that wasn't comic books or movies, that she kept trying to deviate and deter from with different questions he still felt compelled to answer. If not always in as much detail as he could, but that was hardly new. Yet the feeling of wanting to tell her more, tell her everything without filtering for himself or his family or her own good, and having to hold back was.

By the time she got to the theory

(_I ran into an old family friend-Jacob Black_

His dad is of the Quileute elders

_We went for a walk_

He was telling me about some old legends

_**About vampires**_)

he'd flinched once for hearing her say it.

She had prattled onward about her ministrations of the Black boy regretfully, while Edward was torn between too many reactions. Ephraim's descendant, however naive and unknowingly, had broken the seventy year treaty. Bella Swan, incapable of even recognizing the effect she had on the opposite sex no matter how obvious it made itself, had turned the full charm of herself on that poor boy to get what she wants. But even more devastating, and potentionally final, she knew his secret.

Why had she gotten into the car? Gone to the restaurant with him?

Was she finally wise enough to know she should be terrified?

* * *

_"I decided it didn't matter."_

"You don't care if I'm a monster? If I'm not human?"

"No."

Of course not.  
There was absolutely no logic in her.  
Even when the truth was sitting right next to her.

* * *

She had gone on asking her questions and defending her opinions and information-an act which kept Edward tense and stacked the deck against the Quileute youth with each new piece of information she knew too well. It was impossible not to agree, even in terrified and furious confusion, the snarl of his thoughts getting hopelessly tangled in who he thought she should react, for her best and her safety, and what he wanted, mixed with what he specifically felt torn in to for not wanting to happen.

Too many details (_too few_) slipped through his lips, grains of sand from an inhuman land.

His family.

Their survival methods.

And instead of being sensible and understanding, she had veered into reactions over his being gone from class for the two sunny days of the week, concluding in an admission that his absence had made her anxious. The car had been too small and too large and too fast and too slow, and he couldn't keep himself from the dozens of reactions that all collided explosively into each other. Everything he wanted with everything he knew should never, never, never be.

He reprimanded her, trying to make her understand-he should have tried to be more sensible about it himself, the words coming out in a hiss so hard and harsh when her typically oblivious and frustrating words made no sense-when the only reaction was her maddening silence as she burst into tears.

All too soon after that the car was parked in front of Sheriff Swan's house.

Reluctant to allow her to leave the car lest she actually did come to her senses.

(Even if she knew too much. Even if she smelled _too_ good. Even if he'd promised tomorrow's lunch.)

* * *

But it had to end. It always had to end.

With the girl in small safe house, in her tiny dark bed.

With Edward returning back to the world he belonged to; not hers.

There was still something he had to do tonight, there was still another monster.


	15. A Second First Touch

_**Forks, 2005 - March 9th.**_  
The night had been passed as most of Edward's were now.

He worried about Carlisle in Port Angeles and Alice on the steps of their house, but mostly he watched Bella sleeping, trying not to dwell too close on how very nearly she'd come to being ripped apart from being the person he knew almost nothing of and loved so uncontrollably. He let the overpowering scent rip through him like wild fire and contemplated how his world revolved around someone so harmful and helpless and oblivious, so trusting and beautiful and pure.

The morning had seen him returning home only long enough to change, talk to Alice, and return to Bella's to offer her a ride to school. A quiet ride and then the center of everyone's attention. Well, everyone who wasn't already ogling Rose's M3.

It hadn't ended how he'd expected -

_"Jessica wants to know if we're secretly dating. And she wants to know how you feel about me."_

"Yikes. What should I say?"

"Hmm. I suppose you could say yes to the first...if you don't mind - it's easier than any other explanation."

"I don't mind."

- but when did things ever go how he expected them with her?

* * *

Of course the conversation that followed had only served to distract him entirely from class, and incensed him with her utterly absurd obliviousness. Again. He'd been tighter in his responses and conversation at lunch because of that, too. Yet he driven to distraction by the fact he couldn't fault her logic. He'd done his best to keep her unaware of so much, even as that so much turned proportionately on its ear continually gathering new sides and assumptions, wants and actions.

He'd tried to be gentle about how he brought up the assumption that plagued him most.

Especially when she was recalcitrant about how eaves droppers got what they deserved.

_"Do you truly believe you care more for me than I do for you?"_

"Yes. I think that."

_"You're wrong."_

There was the slow meander all their conversations took, eating through minutes as though each was only a second. He'd pondered the option for remaking their plans for Saturday through the whole day, with multiple reasoning's and outcomes and still found himself hopeful and horrified when he asked.

Even when she'd accepted the sensation (and his family's concerns from the other side of the cafeteria) skulked through his pleasure.

* * *

Biology was a new level of hell.

A three day movie viewing while Mr. Banner skipped a chapter on genetic disorders.

An hour spent with his body half submerged in the heat of her nearness, with her scent stronger than it had been by where he chose to sit, with his arms crossed and held tight, warring with the want to reach out and touch her. Crosshatched with the knowledge that he shouldn't. She was so breakable. He was made to break them. But them was not who he cared about. It was only her.

Only Isabella, and she was too fragile and ephemeral to risk even for selfishness. A dozen debates raged in him as the minutes flicked away against the flickering movie backdrop. The lights came back, but seeing as how his vision was the same in either, it hadn't helped.

He'd trailed after her, even along side, as they walked to the gym where her next class would be.

* * *

And on the precipice of convincing himself he had managed it, she hesitated and looked up at him. Her wide eyes intense with her own impenetrable, but this time outwardly obvious, silence. His reflection framed in that dark endless brown as it slipped, when his hand raised without a will to guide or fight it.

His fingertips brushed the skin over her warm cheekbone.

As though it was silk over the thinnest glass.


	16. Be Safe

**Setting: ** The week they begin talking.

* * *

The conversation with Alice played over and over in his mind while he watched Bella sleep. This isn't smart. There isn't any part of him that thinks it's the smart decision. But he's already asked her. And she's already agreed. And he wants to take to her there, to show her something that actually is precious to him. Even if has settled out in his mind as the day he should strip away her lingering naivety about him. She should know the truth.

About him.

About her effect on him.

To choose her own self-preservation.

This coming day, such an innocuous little Friday on her desk calendar mocking him, might be the last one she spoke so openly and freely with him. The last where she was fully innocent of the danger she was in every second he let himself be near her. He'd only so recently gotten to have long conversations with her and there was a chance it could be ripped out from under his fingers tips in a matter of minutes, by his own choice and voice.

* * *

It was another morning for questions.

Edward asked her about her mother, and mother's hobbies, more of her life in Phoenix. There was something soulful and sorrow touched about how she missed the land of sunshine and creosote. Then her grandparents and other important relatives, and school friends. All the people who shared the nearness and dearness of her life, who wiped her tears and caused her smiles, formed her trust and faith and habits, and never had cause to offer her a moments harms.

And, then, eventually, after taking far too long to get to it with how short the timetable is today, the boys that she'd dated.

It's maddening trying to determine by her expression, the tone of voice and the hot red flush of her blood scalding her cheeks how serious she is when she says she's never been interested in dating that much. It's hard to imagine. He can't help but notice her effect on the male populace all around her. Forks might be backwards but it was hardly a fluke in their makeup that drew them all to her.

There must have been others in Phoenix, too - but she only said there was no history to give there.

Before he can hold on to the minutes they are gone, and he has to tell her he's leaving.

_"Where are you going?"  
_

_"Hunting. If I'm going to be alone with you tomorrow,  
I'm going to take whatever precautions I can."_

"You can always cancel, you know."

"No. I can't."

_"Perhaps you're right."_

* * *

He had given into letting Alice formally meet Bella, part of a price for not being utterly alone in this - and very much an unspoken assuagement to the number of times he'd quietly and not so quietly trod on the decades of trust between them as he denied her over and over and over again. He didn't apologize. He couldn't because she still couldn't be right. Yet she'd agreed to help him as far he'd let her and he'd relented against her not speaking to Bella.

Even if her futures still said tomorrow Bella might die in certain possible ways.

* * *

It wasn't hard filching her key or her truck or swapping it with the Volvo, but it was surprisingly hard to leave the thing there and walk away with Alice. Bella was safely ensconced in her classes, focusing on a worksheet, which he can see when one or another of the students working on the same looks about in her classroom. He's going to be leaving her immediate distance. The limit of the city. They could even leave the state in the middle of it, when they aren't thinking about it -

and Bella attracted trouble as easily and commonly as she breathed.

The accident in this very parking lot. The men in Port Angeles. Every minute with him.

The idea of her finding trouble when he's leaving by choice, for a greater necessity of her future well being, and taking the only person capable of watching her from a distance, of knowing when the smallest twist of choice will turn dangerous or deadly. It's hardly the depth of all he's pleading with the pen when he writes on a scrap of paper -

_Be Safe._

- and leaves it on her driver's seat.


	17. Meadow I

Alice's vision hadn't changed, the likelihoods of today's outcomes all depended on him.

How well he could manage being near her and not tearing her apart. How well he could manage to make sure no tiny insignificant error occurred, like her falling down and cutting herself. Alice was right in that much. The worry wasn't about what he might actively do - emotionally and logically he couldn't fathom hurting her - but what he might do if given the slightest cause to lose his tenuous control of the dark, starving part of him that did.

Still he found himself hopeful, even cheerful and impatient, as he waited for her to finish her morning routine. All of these little human things she felt necessary for a given day and for the one that today was in her assumption of what was about to be shared. And like clockwork, when she opened the door, for a few seconds, none of it matter. All of everything everywhere inconsequential besides the nervous way she held herself and the depth of her quiet brown eyes.

It was easy then, so breathlessly ease, to smile and make a joke about their matching clothing of all things.

* * *

The drive was easy and so was getting her out at the easiest hiking spot he'd picked with Alice the day before. He couldn't figure out which part of her was more insane when she revealed she still hadn't told her friends or her father she was here with him - here, alone and unknown; here, alone and unknown, where she could be taken and buried and no one would know where to look if he lost control - because she didn't want any trouble to come to him if things did go wrong.

There she was doing the inanely stupid things he could never predict. Protecting him and his family over herself, when they could take care of themselves. They'd had close calls. Sure, they would miss Forks perpetual ability to have a daytime life but moving was not all that odd after so many decades of it. They already had houses and places they could get to with no need of warning except the message to _Run_.

It was a great compliment. It was a great stupidity, as well.

Edward rid himself of the fashionable sweater once they were parked. He was going to reveal everything to her, so why perpetuate even the smallest of the lies. He didn't need the sweater to keep him warm, and it was comfortable to have the air back against his skin. Though he had nearly had what might relegate itself to a panic attack when he'd seen Bella's tortured expression after he lost the sweater and revealed the already unbuttoned sleeveless white shirt underneath it.

She was realizing it already. They hadn't even gotten to the meadow and she was realizing how wrong this was, how much danger she was in and how she shouldn't have agreed, shouldn't be here with him.

He should have felt better, but whatever was left of his metaphorical stomach and heart sank into his shoes as he told he would take her home. But she denied it, blaming it on the hike. It was a extreme terrain, but they had picked out the one that would give her the least cause for concern, and he did promise to take her home. Whether it was right this second or hours from now. He had to promise. Her. Himself. Carlisle's derelict God. Anyone or anything listening.

Something somewhere that might hold him to his word when she looked so conflicted.

But then she turned annoyed and told him if they were going five miles they'd better go, and Edward agreed despite himself.

* * *

The sun came out from the clouds while they made their way under the canopy of the forest cover. Edward did his best to make her hike as easy as possible, pulling back branches and holding back large fern plants, helping her over the fallen logs and the boulders that were all in the way of his mostly flat path. He thought about picking them up and throwing them from the way or offering to carry her there - as it was brighter golden from the easy sun each time he could catch a glance at it in the far distance - but it was all going to be over soon enough anyway.

He wanted more time. It was hardly surprising.

Yet he wanted it even more every time her heart beat spiked he touched her arm to help her.

Yet every nearness like it caused his chest to tighten with dark longing to rend her heart from her.

At least this way, this slow arduous impatient human pace walk, he could help her and they could talk just barely. He could hold on to the words she was willing to give as more questions flooded his mind. Things he hadn't gotten to in the two previous day. Things he could keep with him after the next few hours were over. Pointless ones that were precious, like her in ability to keep pets without managing to kill them each time and giving up on the whole situation.

He tried to hold on to the words he was saying but each step was bringing them closer. At a hundred yards she started moving so much faster, being able to see it herself, racing forward toward the Meadow - and her eventual change of heart on this whole situation. Following after her he noted the way her jacket fell when she took her steps and the different shades of brown in hair. And when she broke through the forest of ferns and-

Surrounded by the by the multicolored violets, with the sun infusing a glow into her pale skin, the stream in the distance burbling peacefully. Sun streams shifted across her skin and her hair as she glided through the meadow having forgotten him entirely in her awe, the liquid slowness and delicacy of her fragile life turned graceful in her loss of focus for rapture.

- and he was glad he didn't have to breathe.

How could he compare to her, this shining creature of such intense, naive, fragile beauty, who the sun and life loved? How perverted was the universe he lived in that he had to use all of his will in every second not to end all of those things? How could he want to tell her the truth, when it would take her from the reach of the dark place where he lived forever?

And then Bella looked to him, innocent and golden awe suffusing her face, and beaconed for him to join her. She could have been plucked from any mythological story in that moment. The buttery yellow light surrounded her, gracing her with its presence, while she was framed by the bright green of the trees and the colors of the flowers. A creature of light holding a hand out to one of such grave darkness, so unknowing in her prostration of what she invited into the holy of her space. His heart, dead and still, ached with the moment of the truth, with the idea of watching her face fall when she would realize in a few seconds.

She took another step toward him, her smile softening comfortingly, and beaconed to him again.

Taking a deep breath, and cursing the fact he didn't think he could say no to anything she wanted now, even if it were his own ruination, Edward stepped into the sun.


	18. Meadow II

Impossible.

It was the only world.

Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.

Bella Swan sat next to him, while he lay in the grass of the meadow, watching him with her absolute silence of thought and then reached out to trace shapes with her finger against his skin. Impossible was the only word for it. There were words he almost started a dozen times, finding himself writing music notes in the wake of her scent and the golden light and sheer impossibility of her still being there.

Whispered song so far beneath her hearing that tripped almost like prayer from a man who neither prayed nor believe that anyone was there listening to anyone who did. And still his voice formed the slightest, softest sounds in the lower ranges. He didn't move for fear of shattering the moment he least understood and most wished never to end.

* * *

_"It's too easy to be myself near you."_

* * *

And then just as suddenly as impossible serenity had come it vanished when Bella had leaned in close to him when he'd asked what she feared that wasn't him - it was gone. Gone with the way she had leaned in toward his face, and the way the air had suddenly so much less of anything that was not Bella's scent, crowding his throat and lungs and mouth and thoughts and all of his want to press his mouth into hers, her skin, and pull everything she was out of her.

Alice's pristine first visions here, of her body lying broken in his hands, sent him running, as fast as he could twenty feet away.

Gasping with a want he knew and another he spent so long not listening to because of her, gasping for any air that was not the air of her scent even as it was her taste which stuck to the inside of him. While he wanted it gone, it was all of her he was allowed to have, and he wanted to grasp it tighter. To strangle its ability to do anything else - to make him act on his worse impulses, the images that flooded his mind so deliciously, or even leave him entirely when it was hers.

Her face was flushed and shocked and confused until it found him, back in the shadows.

* * *

_"I'm...sorry...Edward."_

_"Give me a moment."_

_"I am so very sorry._  
_Would you understand what I_  
_meant if I said I was only human?"_

* * *

Edward came back, making himself breathe in more of the air saturated with her scent. How could he do anything else? How was he supposed to walk Occam's Razor of not killing her and having no ability to leave her? Especially in the wake of almost killing her _again_? How bitterly wrong was it? That the predator danced around the power of the prey?

Then his bitterness sarcasm at that had gotten the better of him.

And had come the tantrum of displaying it; but leading to something he had not expected.

_"I promise...I swear not to hurt you."_

* * *

He couldn't. Physically it was possible, but nothing in him could. Bella, in her naive unknowing, could have commanded him to anything and he would have done it. She was the brighter and more directing of his world than the sun, than his thirst for her death. Her brown eyes and fidgeting hands, the dimples and smile, and the way she was taking all of this far too easily. The one in control even as he managed the show for her.

And so it began -

The trading of secrets neither of them should have said and which could not be silenced once they were started. Of the fact neither of them should be there, of the fact neither of them could stay with the other, of the wanting to be there, and the selfishness that was giving into it above all else. Especially in the wake of the biggest underlying truth of it all.

Edward explained her appeal, and the only comparisons he had.

Even those to his only family members.

To the first day in Biology.

To the accident.

Every truth spilled from his lips.

* * *

_"You are the most important thing to me now.  
The most important thing to me ever."_

* * *

They were idiots.

They were both idiots.

But they were idiots together.

Edward laid his head at the base of her throat listening to her heart beat mere inches from his ear, forcing himself to breathe the whole time. He could turn his head too fast and her neck would snap. His forehead pressed against the delicate skin of her neck and shoulder, willing himself peace that alluded him. Unable to miss the softness in her fragility. His hands moved down her throat, across her shoulders, and his breathe caught, hunger surging, when she shivered against him and her heart beat raced.

He held his breath only to make himself breathe again. To keep breathing in this madness, this sheer impossible closeness, the fine line of how easy it would be to kill her, to drink all of her blood...and want to die at her loss. His head moved, nose skimming her collar bone, until his ear could be pressed against her heart. He couldn't even tighten his hands as they were around her shoulders.

There is was. Mere centimeters of flesh and bone, muscles all that he could name, each one precious and necessary, and wholly as durable as tissue paper were he to rip them apart from each other to reach the throbbing organ which sounded in his ear. The thirst was intense as her heart beat sang to him and her scent scorched through his body. But he stayed there, listening to her heart, to the piece which dictated everything - his hunger; her willingness to be here with him; his entire world.

* * *

_"I wish...I wish you could feel the… complexity… the  
confusion… I feel. That you could understand."_

_"I don't know how to be close to you._  
_I don't know if I can."_

_"This is enough."_


	19. Meadow III

And in the insanity of it all - freedom.

Edward laughed and surprised himself with offering to run her back to the truck. Having started to share everything with Bella, and having her not run screaming (even as he waited for the signs of it still), he wanted to share everything else. To share all the things he loved about the life behind their lies and shadows. And what better place to start with that outrunning the wind and making it back to the car in mere minutes instead of hours?

Which had been wonderful. At least until Bella tried to pass out, and he had to remonstrate himself while taking care of her. But even then he couldn't help from smiling and laughing, poking gently at her inability as a human and her completely-Bella-only tendency to not be able to manage much of anything, all the while being too stubborn to want help or admit to weakness. Everything, even this, especially this, normality, was beautiful and perfect.

Which lead to the most beautiful of sheer stupidities in the day yet.

* * *

_"I was thinking there was something I wanted to try."_

* * *

Edward tried to prepare himself - any and every of the ways he managed to prepare himself for her presence, as though they were all in place and engaged at this very second with managing normal - when he leaned in and kissed Bella, his hands cradling the fragile bones of her jaw. Soft, ever so soft, trying to think of the pressure that could be placed on a bubble without popping even as the edges of his will burned with conflicting wants. Still. Still. Soft. Don't brea-

And then Bella gasped, pulling air fast between them their lips, and her hands raised, fingers knotting into his hair with such sudden forceful movement and everything inside of him shifted colors. Everything was red, hot. Her heart beat was a raging staccato in his ears and under his finger tips and lips. His teeth were so close and her blood was even closer. He would only need to -

Her scent slammed through his body, directed straight through his mouth, in his throat and chest, and he trembled with the effort it took not to crush her face in his hands, not to tear into her skin, straight through her lips or her throat as her pounding blood and wild heart beat were the only things that he could feel and see and nearly taste.

Then he gently, as gently and firmly as he could mange without throwing her into a tree to run away, unable to let go and incapable of maintaining his will if she stayed as close as that, pulled her face away from his.

_"Oops."_

_"That's an understatement."_

* * *

It passed, and in it Edward found himself even more light.

Everything that for months had been inescapably serious turned - not less serious but - able to filter through with some light. The way she smiled and groused when he refused to let her drive from still being dizzy from the run, and teasing her it was because of being kissed. Going out of his way at the end of their talk, to brush his lips along her cheek and jaw, just because he wanted to touch her, because he was finding ways where he could manage such an impossible feat.

Such a way to make things possible.

The drive back to her house he made slow, both to keep her happy and the make the most of the time he had left in this remarkable day. The setting sun and the coming of twilight could not even dampen his spirit now. While he was slightly reluctant, he found himself telling her about his age and past and family. The details both inconsequential and consequential that matched to so many questions he'd asked of her the days previous and denied her any knowledge of for months.

At least he gave the most of it - not all of it information that was his to give.

That the night didn't end at her door was a welcome surprise. They continued to talk while she made food. Even as it turned into another reveal: this time about the fact he had been watching her sleep. If he didn't quite manage to explain it had started with the trying to inoculate himself against trying to kill her; and missed the part where that was where he'd admitted he'd fallen in love with her first. It was easier to say what she'd spoken of in her sleep than what her sleep had done to his thoughts and his whole life.

It was startlingly ache-worthy when her father came home and he had to vanish instantly.

* * *

He retreated to her room, waiting out the conversation she had with her father and tried hard not to laugh, even as he smiled wide and crooked, when she ran for the window and called out his name through her window, missing him entirely as he lay there on her bed. The look of awe and surprise on her face when she whirled around at his response. She was so beautiful. How did he even contemplate this day had been a real one? It would have been so much easier to think himself insane now.

And how if he was, he didn't want to go back to sanity.

He sat thinking about it as she went about her nightly routine after ordering him to stay put.

It was easier to hush the voices that said not to touch her when she came back. Today - today was changing everything. She spoke about how it was easier and he wanted to laugh. It wasn't easier to be near her. It was more torment to be in her room than it had been in her truck, or in the meadow. The one with an enclosed space and the other with the closest he'd come to killing her again. And still, with his lips against the hollow under her ear - he could not disagree that one part was easier.

And that was the part where he wasn't stopping himself.

Where if this was hell, he was consigning himself over freely now.

Less breathing near her skin and more freedom to actually touch it.

* * *

_"I'm trying. If it gets to be… too much, I'm fairly sure I'll be able to leave."_

_"And it will be harder tomorrow. I've had the scent of you in my head all day,_  
_and I've grown amazingly desensitized. If I'm away from you for any length_  
_of time, I'll have to start over again. Not quite from scratch, though, I think."_

_"Don't go away, then."_


	20. I had to

**Setting: ** Much, much later, in the angst ridden times.

* * *

It all started out so simply.

_"I love you," she said, still blushing._

_His answer, a whisper against brown hair,_  
_one she can not understand yet,_  
_"You are my life now."_

Three days ago. Three days.

Three days ago when haystack hair and sonata's written under duress mattered, when the largest concerns were how to placate Rosalie when she came back from where she ran away in her disgust and making sure that no one accidentally hit Bella with a baseball. Before any of their thoughts on how changed he was in her presence.

Before James and Victoria and Laurent.

* * *

_"You brought a snack?"_

Two days ago. Two days.

Listening to her yell at her father, misunderstand the grandeurs of her plan, her silent mind, until it is too late. He knows too well the wounds the words leave, the patterns followed through a second time, scoring new lances into old wounds, driving the past and the present into a fury.

He didn't understand until she'd explained; their past weight;  
didn't berate her for going too far when he can't be sure  
there is going to be a _far enough_from James.

* * *

_The desperate incredulity,_  
_"You think I should let her go alone?"_

_"Of course not," Alice had said, sharp_  
_but pleading in his head, endless,_  
_"Jasper and I will take her."_

Yesterday. Today. All of it now.

Human hours and minutes were eons to them, and none of them moved fast enough, none of them filled with enough. The ease with which James death was certain. The steadfastness with which Carlisle fell into step with him for that. Three venues of distraction; two plans; one eventuality. They'll lead North, North and North and North, into the high mountains and cold of Washington and then Canada, for the ambush.

But it doesn't come, and they have to turn back. Frustration can not touch the tension of his goal now, it is the only thing keeping everything together in a line, now that the sound the girds his existence is so far away.

There three phone calls. The first. When they find out about the plane ticket from Everett, which leaves them waiting, keeping tabs on Victoria and Charlie, waiting for James to land. The second. When Alice's vision turns to Bella's mother's house, which throws them into action again, because James has figured it out.

He wants to run it. It feels like it would be faster. Waiting the night and then for boarding is too long.

* * *

The plane touches down in Phoenix, and his cell phone vibrates. Alice.

He only hears the first four words - He'll never forget all of them.  
"_Edward, I had to-_"

and the last ones-He'll read it a million times.  
_"-she left a note-_"

Before the hard plastic of the cell phone  
crumbles like dust in his grip on it.  
She went to him.

Carlisle's cell phone buzzes. Edward can't hear it. Can. Doesn't. Does.  
Or the thoughts of his family, slings and arrows, concern and panic and fury.

All he can hear, all he can see is that fragile, barely solid, wisp of a girl, standing on her porch a day and half ago, sniffling and almost in tears already, looking up at him as she was about to go face her father. The irreverently impotent kitten-shaped defiance in her eyes that he so hated especially then, and the low intensity of her voice.

_"I love you. I will always love you,  
no matter what happens now."_


	21. Killing Her

There is only redness then.

One moment he was beside his family.

And then, in a flash of speed and clarity, he was gone.  
Knowing they would follow; never losing the sound of them behind.

The only thing left in the jagged shards of his never less than full awareness is one thing.

**The mastication of James.  
****His own obliteration.**

* * *

Hope is worse. Stillborn in infancy.  
A crushing thing, twined into darkness.

He has chosen to love a dove made of glass.  
Thrust it into a violent storm it can't comprehend.

**There is no human who can win this fight.  
****And the fight James seeks isn't with Bella.**

* * *

Still it explodes as one on arrival.

Bella's blood - Bella's heart beat - Bella screaming.  
The taunting of James's voice. The depravity of his plan for Bella.  
The very fault lines of all of Alice's near century of grief and darkness.

_Love_ and **Hate**, like oil and water, become solvent when he slams into James.

* * *

_"Enough. Remember yourself."_

Carlisle. Golden eyes and blonde hair in darkness.  
The voice that rends one foot of foundation in oblivion.

But everything is far from well. Emmett and Jasper rend James to scraps.  
The billowing smoke can not overpower the scent of fresh, hot blood everywhere.

* * *

No sound can drown out Bella's continued screams. It doesn't make sense.  
Until it does suddenly, with her words and Edward is holding her hand.  
The ugly, sloppy, crescent bitten into her palm.

Two options. Only two options. He sees them in Carlisle's mind.

He can allow her to change, or suck the venom from her blood. The blood he already only barely manages holding back from the scent of alone in every moment near. But he can't condemn her. Doesn't want her to wake up stuck in this hell he's granted to her, not when he's shown the length and depth of their darkness he'd tried to warn her of.

* * *

He lied to both of them. He lied to himself that this could work.  
He tells her he's going to make it all better. The lie to himself is even worse.

He prays, in a mixture of pleading and swearing and inability to do less. Desperation and willingness to give all that is left of his existence in exchange for hers.

**Nothing** could have prepared him for the taste of her blood.

_"Edward, stop. Her blood is clean._

_You're killing her."_


End file.
